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Made in the Image of the Three in One God Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, June 3, 2007 In the past two weeks I have been talking to you about the importance of our identity as Christians. The first week I spoke to you about the importance of Scripture as the foundation for our identity. It bears witness to Jesus Christ. Last week I talked to you about the Holy Spirit, how the Spirit indwells and shapes us to become more like Jesus. This week I will speak about the Triune God in whose image we have been created. The opening chapter of Genesis says that we are made in the image of God. We are like God in important ways: we can speak, we can create, we can think rationally and we have a capacity for a relationship with God and with others. But we also believe that God is Trinity, Three in One. What does it mean to be made in the image of the Three in One God? Let me begin by trying to answer some of the questions surrounding this doctrine. First, where does it come from? The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t tied to an event – e.g. the resurrection of Jesus. We arrive at it through inference. We look at the Biblical evidence and see that Isaiah spoke of God as one. We also note that Jesus in John 16 spoke of the Father and the Holy Spirit as working together with him to guide us into truth. And we read Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians 13, which speaks of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit. From these texts and others we infer that God is Three in One. Second, when did the church first agree on this teaching? The first three centuries of the church were pockmarked with all sorts doctrinal errors. One of the key figures in the debates surrounding the Trinity was a man named Arius - the leader of a branch of the church that argued that Jesus was a created being, more than a human, but less that God. Athanasius of Alexandria led the segment of the church that argued for including Jesus especially and also the Holy Spirit into what we call the Trinity. In A.D. 325 the Council of Nicea sided with Athanasius and produced what we call the Nicene Creed. It says that Jesus is fully God and fully human. But it wasn’t until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 that the doctrine of the Trinity was finally “settled.” That council produced the Athanasian Creed which contains the classic statement of Trinitarian doctrine. Third, what do we mean when we say that God is Three in One? We don’t mean that God – like all Gaul – is divided into “three parts.” Things have “parts.” God is not a thing, God is not a force, nor is God merely the power behind the universe. When we speak of the Trinity we say that God is personal – three persons in one being. Now this is impossible to explain rationally. We can come up with analogies that say the Trinity is like this or like that. For example, we can say that the Trinity is like an egg. It has three parts - a shell, the egg white and the yoke - and yet it is still one egg. Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards in an unpublished essay on the Trinity compared the Three in One God to the sun: God the Father is like the energy of the sun, Jesus the Son is like the shape of the sun and the Holy Spirit is like the heat of the sun. And earlier today I rather crudely compared the Trinity to a fan: the Father being like the energy to run it, Jesus the shape of the blade and the Spirit the wind we feel. Quite frankly, analogies are about the best we can do. At heart the Triune God is a mystery. On one hand, when we say that God is One we are saying that we believe in one God. We are “monotheists”, not “tritheists.” We don’t believe in three deities hanging out together. We believe God is one. God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - lives in internal harmony; God possesses integrity. But God is not just One; God is also Three. One thing this means, as theologian Karl Barth pointed out, is that we believe God dwells in community. The three persons of the Trinity are distinct persons, yet they love one another and communicate with each other and work together to accomplish God’s will in the universe. So what difference does any of this make? How does it answer the question “What does it mean to be made in the image of the Triune God?” The final words of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians - “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” – make up what is called the “apostolic benediction.” These words, I think, can help answer the question: “How are we like the Three in One God and what difference does it make in how we live?” If we have been created in the image of God and if God is One – if God possesses “integrity” - then God expects that we, too, will be individuals with integrity. The word “integrity” has at least two clusters of meanings. One cluster concerns our behavior; integrity is being morally upright, honest and sincere as in “Patrick Fitzgerald is a District Attorney with great integrity.” To possess personal integrity, then, includes that we know what we believe, that we are sure what our values are and what we think is right or wrong, and, even more important, we consistently act on our principles. The other dictionary definition includes “the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety; the quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition.” In other words, integrity also means that we are sound, complete and whole people. We are not marked by undue internal conflicts; we live at peace with ourselves. Because we are made in the image of the God who is One we are to possess integrity. How do we find it? Here’s how Paul’s benediction is helpful. Personal integrity is rooted in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The grace of Christ reminds us that no one is perfect, that we are all fallen, that we have all failed God. The first step in moving toward personal integrity is recognizing that we lack integrity and then welcoming God’s forgiveness in Jesus. A lot of people are at odds with themselves unable to forget the past, unable to forgive what they themselves have done. Our misdeeds can make it hard to live at peace with ourselves. Welcoming the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is the first step toward personal integrity. It is bolstered by our knowledge of the love of God. If God can love us with a self-giving love – that’s what the word for “love” here means – then we can begin to love ourselves. If God accepts us then we can begin to accept ourselves. If God claims to love us, then who are we not to love ourselves? Are we greater than God? Jesus told us to love others as we love ourselves. The implication is that loving ourselves in a healthy way is a necessary prelude to loving others. Self-love is not always sinful and wrong. On the contrary, the love of God allows us to let go of the things we don’t like about ourselves – our pasts, our looks, our jobs, our weight, and so on – and learn to love ourselves as God made us. Loving ourselves helps us gain personal integrity. So does the communion of the Holy Spirit. It means that we are staying in contact with God through the Holy Spirit. Parents know that who their children spend time with often affects their children’s behavior. Sometimes it is for the good. Sometimes it’s for the bad. Hanging out with the Holy Spirit is like that. Except that friendship with the Spirit can only contribute to personal integrity. Personal integrity from God’s point of view is not simply being internally consistent. Adolf Hitler had a kind of internal consistency – consistently bad! Integrity from God’s point of view is living consistently in accord with the Spirit who is holy. Spending time listening for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit will shape us into people who are becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. As God possesses personal integrity so God want us to possess it, too. The Triune God is with us to help us to become personally whole. As I have already said, having been made in the image of the Three in One God means, too, that we recognize that we have been made to live in community. We’re not to be isolated individuals cut off from everyone else. So Paul prefaces his benediction with instructions to “agree with one another, live in peace . . . . Greet one another with a holy kiss.” God made us for relationships. How can we live with others? The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ helps us in our relationships. Once we have experienced the grace of God, we can more easily pass on the mercy we have received from God to people around us. We pass it on to people who may have hurt us and don’t even know it. We can pass it on to people who have hurt us and intended to. We can pass it on to people who are quite different from us. We can pass it on to people who live in ways we personally disapprove of. If our individual relationship with God is rooted in the grace of the Lord Jesus, then all our relationships will finally draw on the grace of God. We will need to forgive, and we will need to be forgiven. The love of God obviously helps us live in community. God’s love enables us to accept ourselves; it also empowers us to reach out to others in kindly ways. It is the same love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a love that is patient and kind. It’s not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way, nor is it irritable or resentful. Love is not happy when people do wrong or fail; instead love rejoices in the truth and other peoples’ successes. The self-giving love of God moves us to be self-giving, too. The communion of the Holy Spirit calls us to relationships that are more than superficial. We can see others as more than just people we live with or work with or worship with; we can see them as sisters and brothers in Christ. It’s a connection that’s deeper than flesh and blood or common interests. It’s a connection rooted in God’s Spirit. It speaks of a connection that binds soul to soul, spirit to spirit, heart to heart so that when someone hurts we, too, hurt, and when someone rejoices, we, too, rejoice. As the Three in One God lives in community so the Triune God helps us to live with others. In three more Sundays, I will no longer be your pastor. My work among you will be finished. I urge you to remain connected to the Three in One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit become the men and women of integrity – complete and whole and perfect – that God created and redeemed you to be. Through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit learn to live in community, praying for each other, caring for one another and bearing each other’s burdens.
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